Jewish Chronicle: 'The vast majority of British Jews consider Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite'

[Denzil_DC]

12. As those libels show, Pollard also has a tendency to project "anti-Semitism" on others,

sometimes in ways that reveal his own heinous prejudices.

This is from the Canary, but the string of tweets quoted speaks for itself:

A newspaper editor claims Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic for calling out inequality

Link to tweet

Jeremy Corbyn ✔
@jeremycorbyn

Ten years ago today the financial crash began.

The people who caused it now call me a threat. They’re right.

Labour is a threat to a damaging and failed system rigged for the few.

[Twitter video]

Since 2009, the top 1,000 families in the UK have increased their fortune by over 155%. Meanwhile, real wages for ordinary people fell 10.4% between 2007 and 2015.

But Pollard suggested that Corbyn was actually talking about an elite Jewish conspiracy in the video:

Link to tweet

Stephen Pollard ✔
@stephenpollard

Been hesitating to tweet this bevause I keep thinking it can't be, surely it can't be.
But the more I think about It, the more it seems it really is.
This is 'nudge, nudge, you know who I'm talking about don't you?'
And yes I do. It's appalling …

Facing a huge backlash on social media, Pollard backtracked:

Link to tweet

Stephen Pollard ✔
@stephenpollard

I accept all the criticism of this tweet, and that I may be way off beam.
But this is what happens when antisemitism is allowed to flourish - and when an antisemite leads a party. You start to read his every word through that prism. Even if the words aren’t about Jews. …

...

Link to tweet

Matt Wain no longer scary @TheMattWain

Im struggling to decode this one. Corbyn was clearly talking about casino banking and other unsavoury banking practices. Pollard seems to be indulging in antisemitic tropes of global banks=jews and then blaming Corbyn for making him say it? We're at peak crank here …

Link to tweet

Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush @WarmongerHodges

If @jeremycorbyn conflated the bankers who caused the 2008 crash with Jews he would rightly be called an antisemite. Yet that's precisely what Stephen Pollard has done. Surely his job as editor of @JewishChron is now untenable. He's clearly unfit for such an influential position.

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/09/16/a-newspaper-editor-claims-jeremy-corbyn-is-antisemitic-for-calling-out-inequality-2/

As for Corbyn's words about "British irony" that Sophie objected to, an American author - and no ready apologist for Corbyn, at first jumping to condemn him - did a better job that I can of explaining the full context:

The Missing Information That Exonerates Jeremy Corbyn

On seeing the video, I, too, concluded that Corbyn’s remark was damning. Linking to a New York Times op-ed (“Getting off the fence about Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism” by the Sunday Times of London’s Josh Glancy), I wrote on Facebook, “I have to agree with this op-ed 100%, both with the writer’s not wanting to view Corbyn as an anti-Semite and his conclusion that this latest revelation makes it unavoidable.”

But I wrote this without being aware of the context of Corbyn’s remark, which was missing from Glancy’s op-ed and so much of the coverage of the video. Once I learned of that context, I retracted my opinion.

Knowing to whom and to what Corbyn was referring in his “English irony” remark makes it impossible, in my view, to consider it anti-Semitic in any way.

He was referring to an exchange that had taken place recently at a conference on Gaza that he hosted in Parliament. One of the speakers there, Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.K., reportedly said, “You know I’m reaching the conclusion that the Jews are the children of God, the only children of God and the Promised Land is being paid by God! I have started to believe this because nobody is stopping Israel building its messianic dream of Eretz Israel to the point I believe that maybe God is on their side.”

Clearly, he was not being serious; he was being ironic.

Just as clearly, Hassassian is not a native Englishman. He was born and raised in Jerusalem, didn’t live in London until he was over 50. He speaks with an Arabic accent.

This is the crucial thing to know in order to understand what Corbyn says later at the Palestinian Return Centre about the Zionists in question and English irony.

As seen in the video, Corbyn recalls that after Hassassian’s speech in Parliament, some Zionists in the audience “berated” Hassassian for what he said. He then makes his infamous comment, but he does so in direct comparison with Hassassian, noting that those who berated the ambassador “don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either.” By comparison, Corbyn went on, “Manuel does understand English irony, and uses it very effectively.”

This context reveals that Corbyn was not calling out Jews; he was not even calling out Zionists in general. He was calling out those particular Zionists who’d berated Hassassian.

He was not ridiculing them for being alien, for failing or refusing to acculturate themselves to such things as English irony, which would have indeed been a classic anti-Semitic remark. Instead, he was simply ridiculing them for being, as an Englishman might put it, relatively thick.

https://forward.com/opinion/409563/the-missing-information-that-exonerates-jeremy-corbyn/

Now, unless somebody else joins in, I think that's quite enough defending Corbyn from me for one day!